In his room, Uwe Hirtentäschel yawns. The rain beating on the window makes him sleepy. He clears away his tools. The angels’ wings quiver in the oak tree, the half-moons, the oars, the tears. Hirtentäschel sweeps the floor of his studio. He’s opening it tomorrow for those who take an interest in art. He has also managed to sell a few things these last years. He doesn’t make much money, but it’s enough, it’s enough.
Children like his little wooden angels. He displays them in the bathtub: twenty little angels in twenty little boats with forty little oars, and if a child shows an interest in the angels, Uwe Hirtentäschel puts his arm in the water and the boats bob up and down.
IN THE YEAR 1658, ABOUT MICHAELMAS-TIDE, THE Well was sunk for the Parsonage, partly for the sake of Convenience, partly to free the Cellar of Water before the Anna Feast, and in the Hole a Piece of Chopp’t Wood was found, of the Size of a Hand. Since this Piece of Wood was as much as the Height of two Men down in the Earth, and since the various different Strata of the Soil were distinctly visible, when the Question of how the Wood came to be so deep in the Earth is raised, I can say only that the aforesaid Item must date from before the Deluge.
FRAU SCHWERMUTH’S TELEPHONE RINGS. IT’S Hirtentäschel on the line. He wants to know what she is doing at the moment. Frau Schwermuth is eating mini-carrots and watching Buffy. That was what Hirtentäschel thought, and by that he doesn’t mean the vegetables and the vampire-slayer, but the fact that it’s not Frau Schwermuth in the Homeland House with her flashlight. Just a moment. Someone’s in the Homeland House now, does he mean? Yes, now. Hirtentäschel is looking down, and someone is slinking about inside the House. Slinking? Yes, slinking could be the word, anyway not switching on the lights. And another thing: before that, Anna Geher collapsed outside the House, and along came two young fellows, one tall as a beanpole and the other small and stout, and helped her. And before that, he could swear, a fox—Uwe?—came out of the House—Uwe, please stick to the point! Can he recognize anyone? Only a silhouette, tall and thin. It’s dark, and his eyes, as she knows. . . Yes, Uwe, but you have glasses! Of course he has glasses!—We ourselves are getting impatient now; those two just won’t stick to the point, although the point is perfectly simple when the beam of a flashlight, or a flashlight app, is wandering over the wall of a building by night and there’s a broken window standing open, although it seems that Hirtentäschel hasn’t noticed the window yet.
Uwe, hang on. Frau Schwermuth clears her throat. There’s someone at the door, please stay on the line. . .
Sorry, Uwe. That was Zieschke just now. It’s all been dealt with. The power went off again. . . no, I’ve no idea why, maybe mice like before, or the lightning just now. . . No, he’ll see to the Homeland House in the morning, I’m only just back from cycling. . . I don’t know, maybe something for the auction.
So says Frau Schwermuth, adding that she’ll go right over and take Zieschke the key to the fuse box. Yes, no, everything’s fine, is it all okay about coffee and cake for Hirtentäschel’s talk? Yes, fine. You too, thanks. Thank you, Uwe. Yes. Yes. Goodnight.
Frau Schwermuth clears her throat. Frau Schwermuth eats a mini-carrot. Her pupils move from extreme left to extreme right.
THE STREETLAMP OUTSIDE THE HOMELAND HOUSE isn’t working. The gate at the entrance shouldn’t be open. Johann shines light in from his mobile. There are bits of glass on the ground. The windowpane is broken, the window’s open. Ma made that crochet-work curtain.
He shouldn’t go in there; he climbs in. Neither Lada nor Suzi nor his half-elf would have done so. The lights won’t switch on. On the other hand, Lada and Suzi and in particular Mustard-Micha would be much more likely candidates to do a thing like that here. A thing like what? Talk about it sometimes, anyway. Not about the Homeland House, of course, what is there to nick in here? Johann shines the flashlight app into the front room. Leaves, not very many of them, are lying on the floor, scattered by a gust of wind. It wouldn’t be the first time for Mustard-Micha—just ask Lütti at the fuel station in Woldegk. Micha attacked Lütti twice. A gas gun and an Elvis mask, but as soon as he opened his mouth Lütti knew it was Micha under the mask, they’d sort of known each other for ever, since their fathers left them before they were born, their mothers are still best friends today. Lütti didn’t show that he knew who it was either time, so as not to hurt Micha’s feelings. A year later Micha organized a booze-up to make things okay and apologized to Lütti. “It wasn’t anything to do with you personally.” Lütti understood that and accepted the apology. The booze-up to make things okay was also a celebration of Micha being out of jail. And then Lütti apologized too, because he hadn’t meant it personally either when he shopped Micha, but twice was once too many. Naturally Micha also understood that, and accepted the apology.
But seriously, what was there to nick in here? The GDR stuff? Everyone had plenty of that at home. As long as a GDR hairdryer is still getting hair dry somewhere or other, the GDR isn’t dead.
The door to the cellar steps is open, a little light comes up from down below. However, the light on the steps isn’t working. Johann listens. “Hello?—Ma?”
He shouldn’t go down there; he does go down there. A long corridor, with the large door at the end of it standing open. The light is coming from the room beyond the door. The Archivarium. Ma is always talking about her Archivarium. It would break her heart if someone—
Johann knows the room from the 700th anniversary celebrations, when it was nearly empty. Now it is stuffed full of books, standing on shelves and on top of other books, with stacks of papers everywhere. In the corner there is a fine pair of antlers. In the middle of the room there is a table with writing materials, a magnifying glass and even more paper on it.
Best of all is the leather: four gigantic leather wall hangings or whatever you’d call them, made up of separate pieces of leather. Johann runs his fingers over one of them; it is cool. There are signs on it, barely legible characters. A date: September 1636. Each single piece making up one of the four hangings is written on and dated. It is as if the room had a skin made of leather and writing.
A mouse makes Johann jump as it scurries through the room, disappearing behind a chest. Should he phone Ma, or call the cops at once? But he can’t get reception down here. Maybe it was only the wind that broke the window upstairs. But then why is the door here open?
A gigantic folio volume lies on the reading desk, its finely decorated pages charred. Johann takes a photo of the book. The lovely old writing. He really wanted to make sure that the bells were all right. But since he’s here. . .
The village was sitting underground, all in a long row, and the earth was cold, and when a chicken began clucking comfortably Barth the blacksmith wrung its neck, and no one said a word.
Suddenly there’s a sound like fine sand trickling down. Oh shit. Johann turns round. There’s light in the corridor again, a shadow outside the door—he runs toward it—but it closes as he drums his fists on it, shouting.
The display on the electronic lock changes from green to red.
EARLY IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1594, THERE CAME a wondrous procession to Fürstenfelde. Several Carts drawn by Horses and Oxen stopp’d outside the Prenzlau Gate, whereupon men and women jumped down from the said Carts, danc’d and sang and all rac’d about freely, but some lay in Cheynes howling and screaming pitifully, or speaking in strange Tongues.
From out of their turbulent Midst two Men stepped out before the assembled Village, one being tall and one short, both with long Beards and strange forreyn Clothing of fine Fabrick in Motley Hues. Without beating about the Bush, they offered a strange Trade: let the Village bring them, before Morning, all its Dullards, Lunatics, the Feeble-Minded, Fantastics, Deranged and Demented, all those possess’d of Devils and assail’d by Despair, that they be brought to the Northern Sea, where a great sea-going Vessel waited to take them Aboard, as was the Custom, for ever and a Day, the cost being ten Thalers for one such Person.
After thi
s a great Silence fell, into which the Smaller Man cried: We know it is not an Easy Thing to part with your own Kin, yet surely your Lives would be greatly Eased thereafter. See them now making merry, and well cared for, with their own Ilk. And when you think you may fall into Despair yourselves, picture the delightful Sea Voyage they are making!
The Village assembled and debated what were Good and Christian to do. They could not tell, and each made his own Decision.
There was no Peace that Night for the screaming of the Lunatics and the playing of all Manner of Lutes and the like Stringed Instruments. In the Morning the Procession went on, and some, aye, some of us with it.
And if you ever be faring in a Ship on the High Seas, then know that you may at any time meet with a Ship of Fools.
O praise the unfathomable Mercy of God.
THERE IS A SMALL TV SET ON THE CHEST OF DRAWERS beside the visitors’ toilet in the Homeland House. The TV has an integrated video recorder. We think that is a good, practical idea, and we are surprised and sorry that such combi-sets are not so common these days.
What the TV shows confuses us. The TV transmits exclusively the horoscope section of the Breakfast TV program on Sat 1. Frau Schwermuth records it every morning and keeps it running nonstop until it’s time to close the Homeland House. The horoscope lady is called Britta Hansen. The village has known Britta since she was that high.
We’re confused because the TV is on now, at this time of day, with Frau Schwermuth doing knee-bends in front of it.
Britta Hansen says: Think of every star sign as telling its own story. You are the hero or heroine of that story as you move past the signs.
The color adjustment can’t be regulated any more. Britta Hansen’s jacket, which is very red anyway, looks as if it were blazing brightly as she thinks out loud about our star signs.
After reaching the Homeland House, Frau Schwermuth first locked the Archivarium properly. At least that meant Jochim the Tinker was in his proper place and couldn’t do any damage. Then she sorted the papers on her desk and stuck a newspaper over the broken window. And now she is doing exercises and wondering how to proceed as Britta Hansen, in a very red dress and shiny nylons, devotes herself to the subject of Libra, the Scales.
Venus, forever in love, gives you an unexpected romantic and emotional adventure. Take what she offers, and who can tell, you too could know the magic of eternal love.
A cardboard notice above the TV set says: THE STARS WITH BRITTA HANSEN. Hansen is a qualified astrologer. She draws conclusions about people and their feelings from the position of the heavenly bodies in the sky. The universe is an open book; Britta Hansen translates it into German.
Hardly anyone goes to the visitors’ toilet without stopping to look at the stars. That’s what happens when there’s a flickering screen in a dimly lit corridor. Visitors—people who used to live in Fürstenfelde, old folk, tourists wallowing in homesickness—stare at Britta Hansen’s bright red jacket. Many children, seeing the set, have lost interest in the horse-shoeing demonstration in the yard, and have had to be rescued from the nonstop horoscopes by their ambitious mothers, who didn’t bring them on a two-hour journey to watch TV but to see a horse shod.
Visitors from outside the village don’t know what to make of their encounter with Britta Hansen. Most of them don’t like to talk about it. Some think the TV set is part of the exhibition, an everyday item from the GDR, but that’s wrong, the TV set is an everyday item from Czechoslovakia in 1988. Very few venture to ask what horoscopes have to do with Fürstenfelde or the Homeland House. It could be that they’ve failed to understand something, that something has escaped them, and if that something is also to do with the GDR, people often feel very uncomfortable about it. Frau Schwermuth gives the braver visitors one of Britta Hansen’s business cards. You can get Britta to describe your own interior landscape for a fee of 100 euros.
This weekend the Sun meets Neptune, there is magic in the air, enough to amount to divine providence.
Even Frau Schwermuth doesn’t always understand everything she says.
The soap dispenser in the visitors’ toilet hasn’t been refilled for two years. If people from the village go to the visitors’ toilet they may stop and say, “Ah, there’s Britta,” to the TV set. But the vast majority don’t talk to it.
Britta Hansen’s hair is red, although just how red isn’t clear. Frau Schwermuth likes it when Britta wears her cowboy hat with a denim shirt and cowboy boots. She is surprisingly often right when she says what will happen in the next few days.
The weekend will be dynamic, heated and fast-moving. Saturday begins in confusion. If you happen to suffer from insomnia, expect a sleepless night. Give all you’ve got, and you will find the sense in it. That, for instance, is what she predicted on Friday for Cancer, the Crab. Frau Schwermuth loosens up her neck muscles. Her star sign is the Crab.
Every year Frau Schwermuth invites Breakfast TV to the Anna Feast. An outside transmission about the festivities would be great. A fax goes to the TV station and another to Britta Hansen. Frau Schwermuth always gets a reply from Frau Hansen. Britta would really love to come, she says, but unfortunately she’s not the one who makes such decisions, her hands are tied.
At the end of her horoscopes Britta Hansen quotes a proverb, an old saying, or a quotation from some famous person: If you are going the wrong way, the faster you walk the more lost you will be.
Frau Schwermuth once said that even as a child Britta was interested in the sky, which is particularly beautiful in these parts. She really wanted to study physics but, fair enough, it turned into something like metaphysics. “Metaphysics between us and the stars.”
Frau Schwermuth’s eyes glow as she looks at the unblinking screen. Now and then her pupils move to the extreme left and then the extreme right. All of life, says Britta Hansen, smiling at Frau Schwermuth, is a matter of beginning again.
“Very true,” whispers Frau Schwermuth. She switches the TV off and goes down to the cellar. She has a few more questions for the tinker.
Fürstenfelde, Brandenburg. Number of inhabitants: dropping. We have a sign up at the entrance to the village. Welcome to the Uckermark. The countryside gets beautiful here. Number of trees marked on the up-to-date walkers’ map as “individual trees worth seeing”: two.
Whatever you’ve heard about us that doesn’t come from ourselves is wrong. This village is not like what they say in the tourist guides, the books, the demographic studies. If a window gets broken somewhere here, and stands open, we’re more afraid of what might get out through it than what might get in.
And you mustn’t believe that stupid map: we have a third individual tree worth seeing—the oak in the field on Geher’s Farm. They like to leave it out of guides because it’s as crooked as backache, and because the field makes no sense for even the most ambitious walker, although the tree is really old and any other 500-year-old oak has a blog of its own.
But the fact is that many people were hanged from that oak tree over the centuries, and we sometimes feel so angry that we’d like to have the whole field covered with cement, not because we’re angry with the field and the oak tree, but because apart from Frau Schwermuth no one’s interested. There isn’t even a plaque about it anywhere.
But we digress.
On such a night as this.
AT WHITSUNTIDE IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1619, a farm worker by the name of Drewes was stabbed. The Murderer ran away, and did not return for Eight Years, but in the end came back of his own Accord, believing that the Crime would have been Forgot. He was taken, kept close confin’d, and met his well-deserv’d End hanging from a Rope.
SO HERR SCHRAMM, FORMERLY LIEUTENANT-Colonel, forester, pensioner, takes the pistol away from his temple and unlocks the car door for the girl. Anna turns the beam of her headlight on him.
“What are you doing with that pistol?”
She dazzles him; it’s like being interrogated.
“Hmm, well.”
“Put it away
.”
Herr Schramm puts the pistol away in his tracksuit trousers.
Anna gets into the passenger seat.
“Schramm. Pleased to meet you.”
“I know who you are.” Anna switches the interior light of the car on and her headlight off.
“Mhm,” says Herr Schramm. He rubs his eyes. He feels sad to realize that he is rubbing his eyes, so he asks, “What are you doing out here?”
“Running.”
“That’s dangerous.”
“I’m also getting into cars with crazy guys carrying guns in a field in the middle of the night.”
Herr Schramm turns away. There is the night, there is the tree, and there is the field. Anna is looking steadfastly at him. He has bags under his eyes, broken veins on his nose, little hairs in his ears. Herr Schramm looks like someone who doesn’t have ambitious plans for his body these days.
“I’m not crazy,” says Herr Schramm.
Unshaven, greasy hair. Herr Schramm looks like someone who goes to sleep on the toilet with his toothbrush in his mouth. Who wakes up, screaming, and doesn’t know when or where he is. If that were so, at least Schramm would say, honestly, why the nightmare? But what good does that do?
The vest and tracksuit trousers, his unshaven face and general look of decrepitude are deceptive. Over the last few days Herr Schramm hasn’t done much, that’s all. He washes with a mild, cream soap, without overdoing it. He regularly cleans his house, except for on top of the cupboards, because why bother? He even looks after his little garden the way others might look after a family member—reluctantly and with a sense of duty. All those tiresome little jobs to be done: turning over the soil, weeding, bush tomatoes, birthdays, shopping, visits to old people’s homes. His father the drunk had the same little broken veins, it’s hereditary. Statistically. Herr Schramm also knows that regularly washing the hair weakens it. It can’t cope so well with the artificial effect of the shampoo. That’s what happens to a man in general when he lets things go.
Before the Feast Page 12